Nobel Prize Winning Novelist Gabriel García Márquez Dies At Age 87

Famous novelist and Nobel Laureate Gabriel García Márquez passed away earlier today, Thursday, April 17, at the age of 87. This comes according to a close family member cited by the Associated Press.

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The legendary author was in the hospital for nine days late March due to an infection in his lungs and urinary tract.
Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez, was born on March 6, 1927 in Aracataca, Colombia. His parents Gabriel Eligio García and Luisa Santiaga Márquez had a Romeo and Juliet type of romance, wherein his mother’s family was opposed to his father. They tried everything to separate the couple but would eventually capitulate and give their blessing.
This love story would be the inspiration for one of his most famous works Love in The Time of Cholera. It was later adapted to a movie starring Academy Award Winner Javier Bardem. Despite all this, though, he was raised by his mother’s parents, Doña Tranquilina Iguarán and Colonel Nicolás Ricardo Márquez Mejía, due to his parents moving away for his father’s work as a pharmacist.
He has often cited his grandparents as one of his biggest influences, so much so that he started writing his masterpiece and most commercially successful novel One Hundred Years of Solitude because he wanted to write a story about his grandparents’ house and the town he grew up in. One Hundred Years of Solitude has often been cited as one of the greatest novels of all time.
García Márquez received the Nobel Prize in Literature on 8 December 1982; he would be the fourth Latin American and the very first Colombian to receive the prestigious award. He is often credited with spreading the literary genre of ‘magical realism’.